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TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2018
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Aliv: ‘Massive firepower’ from $50m capital raise
BTC workers ‘not quaking in boots’ on 15% decline
By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net
By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net
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liv yesterday said it had gained “massive firepower” from its $50 million-plus capital raise, which will likely accelerate its growth and “retool” the company’s balance sheet. Damian Blackburn, the mobile operator’s top executive, told Tribune Business that it had been provided with “fantastic options” by a preference share issue that was more than three times’ oversubscribed by Bahamian investors. The offering closed on Friday at “just over” $50 million, having initially targeted just $15 million, and Mr Blackburn said it would allow Aliv to “complete the job” on its nationwide network roll-out, potentially bring forward the timeline to achieve profitability, and restructure its balance sheet with the “best” mix of financing.
* ‘Fantastic options’ from 3x oversubscribe * Able to ‘grow faster’, reduce time to profit * $20m spent to acquire 100,000 subscribers * Roll-out ‘bogged down’ over BTC issues “It’s likely to close at somewhere above $50 million,” the Aliv chief said of the capital raising. “That gives us massive firepower for two things. One is we could choose to grow even faster, which brings forward the P&L (profit and loss), the customer growth rate, and/or we can retool our balance sheet by refinancing the vendor financing or a portion of the vendor financing. “We also could have the option to put secure bank financing in. “That’s another option we’re looking at. We have an agreement in principle we can execute against. We’ll be deciding whether we do it.”
DAMIAN BLACKBURN Aliv’s preference share private placement memorandum (PPM) disclosed that the mobile operator was in talks with “a major international bank”, likely to be one of the Bahamas’
Canadian-owned institutions, for a $19.5 million credit line. Disclosure of that facility, which would have a five-year term and involve quarterly repayments of $609,375, prompted concerns that the preference shareholders could be disadvantaged if Aliv failed to meet its performance targets and placed its banking covenants under pressure. Mr Blackburn, though, said the preference share issue’s outcome, and the bank’s willingness to provide debt financing, were effectively expressions of confidence in the second mobile operator’s
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BAHAMAS Telecommunications Company (BTC) staff are “not quaking in our boots” over last year’s near-15 per cent revenue decline, a union leader said yesterday. Bernard Evans, the Bahamas Communications and Public Officers Union’s (BCPOU) president, told Tribune Business that his members - and BTC staff generally - knew the company’s years of $300 million-plus revenues were “long gone” with the arrival of mobile competition. He revealed that the BCPOU, which represents BTC’s line staff, had been warned to expect a drop of around $100 million in the company’s annual topline as a result of losing at least 30-35 per cent mobile market share to Aliv. Describing the union as “alarmed but not surprised” by the slippage, Mr Evans
* REVENUE DOWN TO $261M; 17% Q4 FALL * UNION CHIEF: $300M-PLUS DAYS ‘LONG GONE’ * ‘LACK OF VISION’ ON INFRASTRUCTURE UPGRADE said he was a “bit disappointed” by the “lack of vision” displayed by BTC and its immediate parent, Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC), when it came to readying the company for competition. He suggested that key infrastructure upgrades had been initiated too late, meaning that BTC now faces an uphill effort to compensate for the reduced mobile revenue by making inroads into Cable Bahamas’ dominance of the TV/ video and Internet markets.
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Central Bank reforms to Aliv unveils aggressive lower ‘finance exclusion’ margin driving strategy By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net THE Central Bank is aiming to reduce “financial exclusion” and unregulated financial activities by easing the ‘residential address’ requirement for opening bank accounts. The regulator, in unveiling proposed changes to the Financial Transactions Reporting Act and its accompanying regulations, acknowledged that the legal requirement for financial institutions to obtain
* TO EASE ‘RESIDENTIAL ADDRESS’ KYC DEMAND * BANKS RISK AVERSE ON FEAR OF ‘COMPLIANCE FAILURE’ * BAHAMAS LACKS NATIONAL ‘IDENTITY DATABASE’ client home addresses was “ill-suited to the Bahamas’ domestic realities”. And, in the absence of a developed ‘identity infrastructure’ in the Bahamas, the Central Bank said banks and others were unable to implement Know Your Customer (KYC) standards in the same way as industrialised countries can. With financial institutions having difficulty in
obtaining customer verification documents required by law, the Central Bank said “the cost of compliance failure is so great that banks have applied the rules in a prescriptive and risk averse manner”. Its consultation paper thus proposes reforms that allow the Bahamas to implement a customer
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SKY RESOLVES CAT ISLAND AIRLIFT FEARS By NATARIO MCKENZIE Tribune Business Reporter nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net SKY Bahamas chief executive yesterday pledged the airline’s commitment to Cat Island after resolving service frequency issues that had caused concern among the island’s tourism industry. Speaking with Tribune Business, Captain Randy Butler said those concerns were sparked after Sky Bahamas altered its frequencies, having determined that its daily “triangular” service between Nassau, New Bight and Arthur’s Town was not making “business sense”. “It’s very expensive to fly from one of those airports to the next. It’s like coming back to Nassau,” he explained. “In the seven years flying to Cat Island we have been a part of that island’s bread and butter, carrying food stuffs, cargo and medicine, and we did some of that gratis. “In terms of festivals, homecoming we were sponsoring those things with cash and kind. Other airlines may come in for a day or two when there is a festival, but we have been consistently building that business. “Most complaints we have had have been in the last few months because we
decided to change frequencies a bit, and there have been people with other agendas saying things. We are trying to do the best that we can.” The Bahamas Out Island Promotion Board’s (BOIPB) executive director, Kerry Fountain,
acknowledged that tourism stakeholders on Cat Island had expressed serious concerns over airlift during the past several months relating to schedule changes. “A resolution was brought about on Friday,
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By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net ALIV yesterday said it was aggressively targeting higher-spending consumers to recover lost ground on margin targets, its launch having sparked a corporate market expansion. Damian Blackburn, the mobile operator’s top executive, told Tribune Business that while it had likely captured 30 per cent of the existing corporate market upon entry, its presence was estimated to have grown the segment by another 5,000 subscribers. Making further inroads into this category - and other high-spending
* SAYS CAPTURED 30% OF CORPORATE * MARKET ‘CHALLENGES’ HIT PROJECTIONS * NEW PRODUCTS IMPACT HIGHER END markets - is key as Aliv seeks to make up for being around “eight months” behind forecast on its margins due to lowerthan-expected revenue per customer (ARPU). Mr Blackburn yesterday reiterated that Aliv was behind target due to factors beyond its control, including the later-than-expected launch of mobile number portability and delays in its main rival, the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC), facilitating its network infrastructure
roll-out (see other articles on Page 1B). He explained that number portability, which allows subscribers to keep their existing number when switching provider from BTC to Aliv, or vice versa, had been vital to the operator’s plan to penetrate the high-value Bahamian market because businessmen and such consumers wanted to retain their present contact. But number portability, which was
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